A failure "without parallel": the school medical service and the London County Council 1907-12.

IN HIS Annual Report for 1909 the Chief Medical Officer to the Board of Education, George Newman, was moved to describe the performance by the London County Council (LCC) of its statutory duty under the Education (Administrative Provisions) Act of 1907 to provide for the medical inspection of children attending schools in its area as constituting a failure "without parallel".' Although the dispute between the Board and the LCC which prompted this accusation has been discussed in some detail by Bentley B. Gilbert,2 the nature and extent of the Council's failure to implement a measure which had passed through Parliament with relatively little opposition, and which had been welcomed by front-bench spokesmen on both sides of the House,3 has not so far been comprehensively and accurately documented. This article attempts to explore the diverse influences which led the LCC, by far the largest education authority in the country, to ignore the instructions of the Board for almost five years, and to discuss the wider implications of the dispute in relation to the development of the School Medical Service nationally. Paradoxically, the LCC's difficulties stemmed in part from the action of its predecessor, the London School Board (LSB), in appointing, in 1890, the first full-time medical officer to be employed by a British education authority, an action identified by Newman as a landmark in the history of school hygiene in Britain.4 In practice, the LSB's action was not as significant a step as it might at first appear. By the 1890s many school boards were obtaining medical advice for a variety of administrative purposes, such as the examination of candidates for teaching appointments, or inspection of children allegedly unfit to attend school. The sheer size of the LSB meant that such examinations, which in most boards would be infrequent or negligible in number,